Monday, April 23, 2018

Welcome to the 2018 Edition of the 5 Days of Homeschool Blog Hop! This is a favorite event for longtime Homeschool Review Crew members, and it's always exciting to have new Crew members join in the fun as well. We've all been looking forward to sharing ideas, encouragement and advice related to homeschooling, and we hope you enjoy visiting all the participating bloggers. For this round of the Blog Hop, I chose to talk about some of the many lessons that I have learned as I've played the role of homeschool teacher over the years.

Trusting the Experts

Whenever we take on a task that is important or difficult - or both! - it's wise to get expert advice. Taking the responsibility for educating our children at home is one of the most important jobs we could possibly do; and it's a job that definitely comes with challenges, so getting some input from experts makes sense. But which experts do we turn to? It's pretty tempting to look at what the education professionals are saying about what children should learn and when, and maybe it's even tempting to try to match subjects and skills we're teaching to the corresponding grade levels of the school system. Don't get me wrong - there is a lot of value to understanding some general benchmarks of what kids are able to learn at certain ages, but we needn't be ruled by those broad guidelines. After all, each child has his or her own unique set of interests, talents, strengths, and struggles; and one of the greatest advantages of homeschooling is the ability to suit education to each child's needs.

Moms are experts when it comes to their own kids. There's no one that knows my kids better than I do, and no one that is more committed or invested in their success than I am. That means Mom knows best. Maybe not in everything, but in a lot of things. Moms tend to know their kids' strengths and weaknesses, what their kids can handle, and how they'll learn best. I learned to trust my instincts on what curriculum would be a good fit, and what would work best. Our homeschool did not need to do the same material in the same grades that the public school was doing. Our homeschool did not need to look like our friend's homeschool. We did not need to use the same curriculum that the other homeschoolers in our group used, no matter how great. When I learned to trust my own knowledge of my kids, and the decisions about teaching and parenting that I'd prayed over, I could stop second-guessing and comparing. And have peace.

God's Word gives the most reliable expert advice! I have learned that I can trust God to provide all the wisdom I need to do this homeschool thing. And the whole parenting thing, from start to finish! I've learned that's true, but I'm still learning to actually do it. To really, honestly, whole-heartedly trust God. It's easy to talk about trusting, but it isn't always easy to live it out, because I want to know and I want to help. And if I'm brutally honest, I kind of want to be in control. The lessons about trusting God that I've learned as a homeschool mom can be applied in every aspect of parenting, and in every other part of my life.